Paint Trails

12.14.12

The Art of War

The Daily Pic: Jack Goldstein made violent pictures that were under strict control.

This huge painting was conceived by Jack Goldstein in 1982, and is now in a show of his works at Venus Over Manhattan gallery on New York’s Upper East Side. Goldstein is famous for being a classic mad artist, but what I find most striking about this image is how it relates to rigorous “systems” art by his contemporaries such as Sol LeWitt. It so happens, of course, that the “instruction set” that determines the lines in Goldstein’s picture has to do with the trajectories of bombers attacking a city, and the arcs described by projectiles meant to take them down.